Communication technologies continue to provide more capabilities, increase in capacity, and expand throughout the world. An international communication network (commonly referred to as the “Internet”) is increasing in both numbers of users and capacity. The Internet is accessible by the general public in a large number of places around the world. Users of the Internet have a universe of network-accessible information.
Along with the Internet, there is growth of other private, government, and commercial networks reserved for authorized users. For instance, some commercial networks are reserved for authorized users such as employees, suppliers, or customers of a company. These other networks may share communication links used by the Internet or they may not.
Regardless of whether the network is the Internet or other networks, users are able to obtain network-accessible information by using web page display systems (sometimes referred to as “network browsers”). These web page display systems download web pages (often written in Hypertext Mark-Up Language or “HTML”) containing desired information from the Internet and various private networks. A web page is displayed through the use of the web page display systems on display screens of user terminals, which can include workstation monitors, television sets, and other display devices.
A web page provides many different formats of information including text, graphics, video, sound, and any other format of electronic data. One or more web pages are stored at web sites having web servers that are connected to the network and allow access to the web pages by users of the particular network. The type of information at each particular web site varies from news, cultural, sports, commerce, governmental, corporate, investment, and other various topics. The private networks usually are more limited in the type of information provided compared to the Internet.
Each web page also may contain numerous “hypertext links” which link one web page to many other web pages of related information. As network technology has progressed, everything from web page-based e-mail services, groceries, bookstores, and brokers are competing for the attention of web page users. Web page users have voracious appetites for technology, information, and commerce. Skilled experts have been replaced by skilled masses capable of dealing with more web pages and a vast variety of scenarios and applications.
Because of the amount of information located in a web page and the fact that several web pages may be linked together by a long chain of hypertext links, a user frequently has to use multiple positioning controls, such as scroll bars, to locate a desired portion of the web page to display on the user terminal. Using the scroll bars to locate the desired information each time the user accesses the Internet is time consuming and inconvenient, as the user must repeat the “scrolling” to display the relevant portion of the web page each time the Internet is accessed. This is significantly inconvenient if the web page is large or cluttered with many different types of information.
For example, a web page that displays stock information often displays additional advertising and news related to the stock market. However, only a portion of the web page may have a search window where the user can search for current information for a particular stock by entering its stock ticker symbol. With existing Internet and web page display systems, the user will need to first log on to the Internet, request the particular web page, and then use the scroll bars or other controls to manually focus a display area of the display screen over the portion of the web page that has the search window for stock information.
Thus, it can be appreciated that there is a significant need for a system and method that can enhance web browser applications and reduce the amount of time that a web page user requires to manage and view web pages.